The Representation of Women in Horror Films

Usually in horror films, women are portrayed as the ‘damsel in distress’ and the helpless character being attacked by the killer either for sexual reasons or for committing a ‘bad act’ such as having sex or taking drugs. Traditionally, and throughout horror history, men often take the role of the killer or the hero and the women take the role of the victim. This in some cases is reversed according to Barbara Creed in female roles such as sirens, witches or medusa for example. The women in horror movies are usually attractive, sexually seductive and sexually active.

Horror films tend to follow the rule that the male killer kills the group one by one until he himself is killed by the ‘last girl’. This is featured in the book by Carol Clover: ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’. This suggests that the female is usually the survivor or one who kills the killer therefore giving females in horror power over males, which is feminist ideology. However now with the influence of feminism and modern ideologies women are more successful and therefore the representation of women has changed in horror films to intelligent women who try to figure out who the killer is and stop them rather than be overwhelmed with fear and get killed stereotypically as they were before. For example, the female character in the movie Scream played by Courtney Cox. They take the role of a male hero and take charge of the movie, trying to find the killer and either capture or kill him.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the theory was that the motivation for the killer was derived from relationships with women i.e. a mother, sister of ex-girlfriend. This type of thing can be seen in movies such as Halloween (1978) where Michael Myers is provoked by his sister’s neglect and Psycho (1960) where Norman Bates has trouble coming to terms with his mother’s death and her relationship with him before she died. This shows the female role as the cause of the killings and responsible for releasing a crazed killer onto the world.

The ‘Male gaze’ is mentioned as many people claimed that men who watched brutal, bloody deaths of women were somewhat aroused by the voyeur element of the shots, and this arousal being brought to light because of camera techniques such as angles or lighting. Laura Mulvey suggests that films put the viewer in the position of an ‘appraising heterosexual male’ which present women as an object to be viewed – the audience is made into the main male protagonist who looks voyeuristically at an objectified female.

Carol Clover, the writer of the book: ‘Men, Women and Chainsaws’ has many points of feminism in horror, one of them is the audience identification. She questioned who the audience identifies with in the film. It was previously assumed that the males of the audience identified with the male killer. Clover argued the audience rather identifies with the ‘final girl’. This means that the audience identifies with the fear of being attacked as opposed to the satisfaction of the killer as he kills people or sneaks up on them. Secondly, Clover mentions the gender fluidity or repressed sexuality of the murderer. There are some examples: Freddie Krueger raped children before he was burned, and Michael Myers kills because of his jealousy of his sister having sex, and uses a phallic symbol in the form of a knife to deal with his repressed feelings.
Jeremy Tunstall argued that the existing research on gender representation found that representation of women in the media highlighted womens; deomestic, sexual, consumer and marital activities to the exclusion of everything else . Women are portrayed as housewives, mothers and sex objects. This is supported by the movie The Shining in which the Jack Nicholson character works at the hotel and the Shelly Duvall character is a housewife who looks after her house and her son.

My preference of the critics and the one i agree with most is Carol Clover. This is because  i think that the audience never sides with the killer as most people relate to the survivor and the 'final girl'. They identify with the fear of being chased or killed rather than the enjoyment of watching someone being stalked or killed. I do not agree with the male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey as personally i do not become aroused when a woman is brutally murdered and i disagree with anyone who says they do unless there is a background of deep mental problems.
 A video of a typical female death scene in Scream
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3_sdD1ecmg&feature=player_embedded